The intentionality (one sometimes also finds “intentionality”) is a major concept of the philosophy of the spirit of the XXe century. Resulting from medieval philosophy, it is given to the center of the reflections by Franz Brentano in her courses in Vienna at the end of the XIXe century.

Presentation of the concept of intentionality

Intentionality can be characterized by some formulas: to contain something (not inevitably real) as object, to be in connection with something, to have an object immanent. Intentionality is a characteristic of the Conscience. According to Brentano, intentionality is the criterion making it possible to distinguish the psychic facts from the physical facts: done everything psychic is intentional, i.e. it contains something as object, although it is always in a different way (belief, judgment, perception, conscience, desire, hatred, etc).

The concept of intentionality will be taken again by Edmund Husserl which gives him a central role in the development of the Phénoménologie. There will remain the key concept of phenomenology and the Existentialisme to the length of the XXe century (Sartre for example is inspired largely by this concept).

Thereafter, it is also taken again to be analyzed and criticized by the philosophy of the analytical and rather Anglo-Saxon spirit (Searle in particular), whose principal project is “to naturalize” intentionality, i.e. to give an account in nonintentional terms of it. In this step, the analytical philosophers tried to bring intentionality closer to the linguistic concept of Intensionnalité (with an S), which is a characteristic of certain proposals: the intensionnelles proposals (in opposition to the extensionnelles proposals) do not satisfy certain rules of extensionnelle substitutability. Thus, “Pierre believes that Corsica is in the south of France” is not equivalent to “Pierre believes that Corsica is in the south of France” if Pierre is unaware of that Corsica is Corsica.

However, this bringing together was criticized, in particular by Searle. Indeed, the intensionnality is a linguistic criterion which relates to proposals, i.e. a way of expressing the things, whereas intentionality characterizes phenomena. An intentional state can be expressed extensionnellement, and a nonintentional state can be expressed intensionnellement (example: in “9 is necessarily higher than 5”, one cannot replace “9” by “the number of planets of the solar system”; it is thus a intensionnelle proposal which does not relate to an intentional fact).

In the same way, the coincidence of the distinction intentional/nonintentional and facts psychic/made physical affirmed by Brentano were abundantly criticized: there are physical facts which are intentional (a table, a photograph, a text) and nonintentional psychic facts (a feeling of exaltation, of anguish).

Moreover the strict correspondence between psychic Conscience and intentionality and facts is put at evil by data issuent psychology cognitve, indicating that many mental processes (thus psychic) are not conscious (v. memory procedural or implicit).